Fighting through the fear: DART helps victims navigate their way through legal system

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second in a six-part series exploring the many facets of the Montgomery County domestic violence agency Laurel House and the services it provides to the community.

For Rita, the events of June 2, 2011 will forever be burned into her mind.

That was the day that the man she had been dating for two years — the man she’d met through her best friend and had fallen madly in love with, the man who’d moved into her home with her two kids, the man who started to grow more jealous and controlling six months earlier, the man who forbid her to wear makeup or sandals out of the house, the man who began pulling her hair and hitting her during fights, the man who took her cell phone away and started driving her to and from work every day and following her during her lunch break to make sure she wasn’t going anywhere he didn’t want her to go — nearly killed her.

Around three in the afternoon he came, enraged, to the office where Rita (not her real name) worked as a receptionist. He went behind her desk, grabbed her by her hair, told her to come with him or he was going to kill her children, and then started dragging her toward the front door.

“I was screaming, and then one of my co-workers came out to help and he told her, ‘Back off, I have a gun,’” says Rita. He dragged her out of the building and shoved her into his car. They wrestled inside the vehicle as he started it up and tried to pull out of the parking lot.

The car door was wide open as he drove. “I jumped like I was diving into a swimming pool,” she says. She hit her head on the car door, and then her head hit the pavement. “My skull felt like it exploded into a million pieces, like a glass hitting the floor,” she recalls. For a few moments she was unconscious, under the car, the tire just inches from her head, when a co-worker rushed over and pulled her out. On her feet and awake again, Rita started running away from her attacker through the parking lot, screaming “He’s gonna kill my kids! He’s gonna kill my kids!”

As he got out of the car to chase her down on foot, another co-worker ran out of the building, grabbed him, knocked him to the ground and held him until police arrived and hauled him off to jail.

Rita says she escaped the incident with only bruises and a concussion. But that was hardly the end of her terror.

“I was real bad,” she says. In the ensuing weeks, she was constantly sick to her stomach with fear and lost 40 pounds off her already slender frame. She had nightmares that he was under her bed, or waiting outside the front door of her house.

And then Rita got a call from Wallis Brooks — “Walli” to her friends, to domestic violence victims and advocates, and to her colleagues at the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, where as an Assistant District Attorney she heads the Domestic Violence Unit — informing her she had to go to court for her abuser’s preliminary hearing. She’d have to see him for the first time since the assault.

“I was crying, I was like, ‘Please, please, I don’t wanna go, I don’t wanna see him, I’m scared of him,’” she remembers. Brooks gave her the phone number for the Domestic Abuse Response Team (DART) program at Laurel House — the Montgomery County domestic violence agency — and Rita got in touch with DART manager Stacy Sweinhart.

“She said, ‘I’m here to help you, do you want me to go to the preliminary with you?’” says Rita. “I was going to go myself; I don’t have any family here, so I said yes.” Sitting in the parking lot of the district courthouse before the hearing, “I started crying and shaking and shaking and shaking,” she recalls.

She went inside, told them what case she was there for, and sat down in the lobby. “I had my sunglasses on because I didn’t want anyone to see me crying, and then someone mentioned his name and I started crying hysterically. And then Stacy came in, came over to me, and I hugged her and she was like, ‘Don’t worry.’”

“I couldn’t stop crying for nothing,” Rita says. “I was like, ‘Please, please, please, don’t make me do this.’ I just wanted it over. I had too many feelings — I felt like, ‘What did I do for him to get that angry?’ I felt bad because his sister was my best friend, I felt like I was hurting her, and hurting his mom. All this stuff was in my head and I told Stacy, ‘I think I’m gonna drop the charges.’ And she was like, ‘Don’t do that — look at all you’ve gone through.’”

Sweinhart stayed with her for hours at the courthouse, comforting and advising her, walking her to her car when it was all over. “She was so supportive,” says Rita. “She talked me through it. She said, ‘If you don’t go through with this he’s going to get out and maybe do something even worse to you.’ If it wasn’t for her, I definitely would have dropped the charges.”

In 2012, Rita’s abuser went to trial. He was convicted on assault charges and got a two-year jail sentence followed by three years’ probation. Rita’s since moved from Montgomery County to a different location in Pennsylvania with her kids, and has started her life over. She still talks to Stacy once in a while. “I know she doesn’t have my case anymore, but she is the best,” says Rita. “I told her, ‘I’m sorry, but I love you and you saved my life and I’ll never forget that.’”

AS THE TIMES HERALD DETAILED in Part One of the Laurel House series, since its inception in 2005 the DART program has provided crisis response services to victims of domestic violence in the hours immediately following an incident. But DART also exists to help survivors navigate through their often difficult, anxiety-ridden, time-consuming and traumatic journey through the legal system — including Protection from Abuse (i.e. restraining order) hearings, preliminary hearings, status hearings, trials and more — with the ultimate goal of holding abusers accountable for their crimes.

DART advocates connect with clients either by responding to crisis situations and sticking around for the subsequent legal process, or by coming in later in the process through referrals from prosecutors, such as in Rita’s case.

“There’s something to be said for the consistency of knowing there’s a person there that’s going to go through the process with you — a shoulder you can lean on, someone to talk to, someone to ask questions of and who can shed light on what can be a very confusing and frustrating process,” says Brooks.

“My sad reality is that I have so many cases, and when a hearing is done on one, frankly, I’m usually pulled quickly into another one,” says Assistant District Attorney Alec O’Neill, who works alongside Brooks in the Domestic Violence Unit. He estimates that DART advocates are involved in about half of the hundreds of cases the unit handles annually. “ picks up the slack or fills that gap where I wouldn’t be able to go back and talk with a victim for a period of days or weeks. They’re there for that and to offer that kind of counseling and support.”

The process that can be overwhelming for just about anyone, but particularly so for those for whom the court system is completely foreign. “ can happen to anyone, and if it reaches the point where someone is arrested and charged, a lot of the time a victim will have no idea what’s coming next and what they need to do,” says Tina Reynolds, Laurel House’s senior director of community programs and support.

In one sense, the direction DART can provide through the system is literal. “The courthouse is so frightening,” says DART advocate Ashley Thompson. “It’s big and it’s cold and it’s ugly, and then you get into the courtrooms and they’re ugly and the people are nice but they’re not friendly. And then you have to sit there by yourself — people look so alone and small all by themselves at that big table.”

“That courthouse is a huge facility and if people have to find their way and walk the hallways several blocks deep to get to their courtroom, if they have to do that alone, that’s a very intimidating set of circumstances,” agrees Towamencin Township Police Lt. Jeffrey Kratz, who helped found the DART program. “Prosecutors and police can’t always be there to escort them.”

DART’s guidance is also deeply informational. Though DART advocates are not attorneys and thus cannot legally represent their clients (Thompson says advocates are barred by law from sitting at the plaintiff’s table during hearings), they’re adept at explaining procedures and protocols and legalese, intricacies and nuances, and can advise clients on the pros and cons of pursuing certain legal avenues. One example is the PFA. While DART typically recommends abuse victims seek a PFA (which is a civil proceeding, though violations of the provisions of a standing PFA can become a criminal proceeding), there are times, Reynolds says, where “applying for a PFA is not the best thing. It’s not for everybody.”

“A PFA can stop the behavior, sometimes it lessens it, but other times it agitates people,” Sweinhart clarifies. “Not to mention that you have to be there with your abuser in open court for a PFA hearing. If you’re fleeing someone, hiding somewhere from them, that could jeopardize your safety. What if he follows you after the hearing?”

DART advocates will explain some of the things to expect at a preliminary hearing — the demeanor of the particular judge and what kind of questions that judge might ask, or how some of the negotiations between prosecution and defense attorneys might play out. In many cases, they’ll decipher what just transpired following a hearing.

They’ll also enlighten clients about some of the services available to them beyond the courtroom, such as recently created PA-SAVIN: The Pennsylvania Statewide Automated Victim Information and Notification system, which provides up-to-the-minute status of any offender housed in a county jail, state prison or under state parole supervision in Pennsylvania, and sends alerts via phone or e-mail regarding an inmate’s release, transfer or escape.

“Anyone can apply for it,” says Sweinhart, “and when you tell people that this program exists, you can see the relief on their face.”

It’s that kind of solace, that feeling of emotional support, that DART clients may need the most. “We’re not really pushing or nudging them what to do, but we’re saying, ‘We’ll be there for you and we’ll go with you,’ and sometimes that’s all people need to hear,” says Thompson. “Just sitting with them, finding out how they’re doing, prepping them. A lot of times we see victims who don’t want to testify — they’re embarrassed or fear that they’re gonna get in trouble with the abuser once this is all said and done, or they’re afraid a lot of things from their past will be brought up by the abuser’s lawyer while they’re on the stand in an attempt to discredit them. But having an advocate there can calm some of those fears and you can say, ‘Yes, that might happen, but you need to also think about what he did to you.’”

MONTGOMERY COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY Risa Vetri Ferman says there’s a world of difference between how domestic violence cases are handled now and when she began her prosecutorial career in 1993. “You would have a case and it was your expectation that the victim would be calling you at some point to say that she did not want to prosecute,” Ferman recalls.

“I think a lot of times victims saw no value in it,” she says. “Many of them endured months and years and lifetimes of abuse without ever thinking they could have an escape mechanism, and I don’t think that back then anyone looked at the criminal justice system as that escape mechanism. In fact, to the contrary, I think they looked at it as a system likely to generate more abuse. The fear was, ‘If I prosecute, nothing’s gonna happen to him and I’m just gonna get hurt more,’ so it was easier to just maintain the status quo.”

If a victim came to prosecutors requesting that they not proceed with a case, “our approach was, we’re going to respect their wishes,” says Ferman. “It was just accepted. You were never looking to bolster the victim. It wasn’t even part of our lexicon back then that you could provide support so she could come through the system. If you look at files from back then, you had a lot of charges dismissed based on the victim not wanting to proceed.”

That mindset began to change in the mid-1990s, Ferman explains, as domestic violence became more of a public issue through awareness and education campaigns, and organizations such as Laurel House began to establish support programs for abuse survivors. Rather than simply acquiesce to a victim’s decision to drop charges made out of fear or weariness, the approach — which Ferman has maintained and advanced further under her watch — became “to give them the resources so they can stand up and not tolerate the abuse,” she says. “It’s to help give them the strength and the support to go from being victims to being survivors, and to be able to continue with the prosecution of the case.”

DART advocates, Ferman says, can be a rock for abuse victims at that crucial moment “when they’re worn down emotionally and it’s easier for them to say ‘never mind.’ They’re decent, compassionate people, well-trained in dealing with the issues that someone who’s been victimized is going to face, and they make a difference time after time after time.”

Yet even with that institutional shift and progress, Brooks — who estimates she’s handled approximately 4,000 domestic violence cases since joining the unit in January of 2003 — says that “the single biggest issue in domestic violence is still the reluctance of victims . Sometimes getting them on board is tough.”

O’Neill notes that prosecutors don’t always need victims to testify against their abusers in court. In Rita’s case, surveillance video cameras captured her abuser’s assault on her at her workplace, enabling prosecutors to win a conviction without putting her on the stand. Sometimes there’s a family member, neighbor or someone else who witnessed an incident of domestic violence and is willing to testify; other times, hospital records, photographs of injuries and testimony from cops who responded to an incident might be enough.

But, he says, “It’s probably fair to say that at some point down the line going to have to testify. Unfortunately, we can’t get away from the fact that they’re the victim and they’re always gonna know the story better than anybody else, other than the abuser. Oftentimes we have to worry about what a jury is going to want us to show, and all too often they’re going to want us to show the victim’s perspective. But we do try not to have a victim testify any more than they absolutely have to, in order to avoid further traumatizing them.”

On a recent Monday morning, Brooks’ point was proven in Courtroom 6 of the Montgomery County Courthouse. A 30-year-old defendant was facing two counts of felony aggravated assault and related charges for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend in their Norristown home last August. DART advocates were not involved with the case.

According to the police criminal complaint, the woman – who was approximately four-to-five-months pregnant at the time – told investigators that the defendant threw a suitcase at her, pushed her down a flight of stairs and punched her in the face and stomach. And when she cried out that she was pregnant, the complaint states, the defendant said to her, “I don’t care. I don’t even care about the baby.”

Police said that the woman managed to escape the house and get the attention of a passerby, who gave her a cell phone to call 911. When cops arrived, according to the complaint, they observed that she had a black eye and was “visibly shaken,” and she was flown to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Upon her discharge, the complaint states, the woman told investigators about other incidents of physical abuse at the hands of her boyfriend. She claimed that last May, after she’d retrieved her cell phone – which her boyfriend had taken from her – and hid it under a sofa cushion, he pointed a gun at her face and said, “I’m going to blow your head off if you don’t give me my phone.”

In court, though, the woman told Brooks she didn’t want to testify, didn’t want to proceed with the case.

“I never thought it was going to get to this level we’re at right now,” the woman said from the stand as the defendant stared straight at her. “It’s just that I was pregnant at that time and I was very emotional,” she continued. “He is the father of my child…I don’t have any other family that can help me.”

“You understand that you had injuries that were visible to the officer, you understand that?” Brooks asked her.

“Yes,” she replied softly, crying into a tissue.

“You understand we’re dropping the felony charges here?” said Brooks.

“Yes,” she said.Without her testimony or cooperation, Brooks had little chance of a felony aggravated assault conviction, which could have meant a sentence of up to 20 years. The defendant pleaded guilty to misdemeanor simple assault and misdemeanor recklessly endangering another person, with a recommended sentence of 23 months in jail and an additional year of probation.

“It was the best I could get — I got her three years of protection,” Brooks says afterward.

“I just try to work with the situation and do the best we can and hopefully prevent another incident, and that’s all you can do,” she says. “Because ultimately we’re trying to prevent more serious incidents and possibly a homicide.”

Would DART presence have helped? “It’s hard to know for sure,” says Brooks, but she mentions other, similar cases in which DART advocates made a difference. One young woman, she says, “didn’t want to prosecute, she was scared, she was young, she didn’t know what was involved. And Tina worked with her and we got through the hearing, and he wound up with a felony aggravated assault conviction and he went to jail.”

THERE ARE MANY REASONS WHY A VICTIM will decide that they don’t want to go through with domestic violence-related charges, says Brooks – they’re still “in love” and he says he’ll change; they want to stay together for the sake of the kids; she may be dependent on his paycheck. One of the biggest reasons is the fear factor, that there’ll be some sort of reprisal, perhaps lethal, from the abusers – especially if they’re free on bail pending the outcome of legal proceedings.

Victim intimidation during most stages of the journey toward a domestic violence conviction feeds that fear.

Outside a county courtroom where PFA hearings were being held on a recent morning, a dozen women stood together waiting for their turns before the judge on one side of a hallway – anxiety and trepidation etched on their faces – while the men accused of abusing them stood or sat on the other side of the hallway, glaring at the women, unfazed by the presence of the two armed officers standing nearby.

“It’s a terrible set up there,” says Sweinhart.

Meanwhile, DART volunteer advocate Heather (who declined to give her last name out of privacy concerns) says she’s seen even worse during preliminary hearings and trials. During one case of a man who’d been in and out of jail for repeatedly abusing his wife, and was again charged with savagely beating her, Heather says, “in the courtroom, with all those police officers there, he tried to intimidate her again, staring her down and doing things like this at her” – Heather draws her finger across her neck in a throat-slashing gesture. “They had her surrounded with police officers and he still had these outbursts where he’d yell horrible things at her. In court she said, ‘I think it’s actually going to take him killing me before he doesn’t get out of jail again.’”

Ferman believes that most of the intimidation happens outside of court. “It’s the anxiety of preparing to go to court, the not knowing if something you say will trigger a violent response after court by the person against whom you testified. People are generally on their best behavior in court, but we’re not there when the victim leaves court and goes home and starts to doubt themselves. When they ask themselves, ‘Am I doing the right thing? Is he going to come attack me and kill me?’ They question whether or not it makes sense to move forward, and often that becomes, ignore it and it will go away.”

Based on the countless thousands of domestic violence cases Ferman’s handled or overseen, “It rarely just goes away; it only gets worse,” she says.

“Sometimes they say, ‘How can you possibly protect me?’ and I can’t get upset with them for saying that,” says Sweinhart. “If someone could absolutely guarantee that they’d be safe, I’m sure we’d see all the cases go through. But we can’t guarantee that. I know how hard it is for them, I get it. We can help them with a safety plan, we can be there for them whenever they need us, we can try to reassure them and help build up their confidence and their courage, but it takes a lot of strength sometimes to get past that fear.”

But, as Rita can attest, DART can help mitigate some of that fear.

In the year between her abuser’s arrest and his conviction, Rita says that “every time I was feeling sad, feeling this pressure in my chest, every time I thought I was doing the wrong thing, I would call Stacy and she was always there for me, talking me through it.”

“I’m honest with them, but I tell them that things really can get better for them once they get past all of this,” says Sweinhart.

Likewise, Thompson says she never sugarcoats anything for the victims she counsels, explaining to them that going through the court system may be scary, but that they just need to focus on telling the truth, on telling what happened to them. “I can’t promise anyone that they’ll get the outcome they want, but I tell them the fact that many, many times, abusers get significant sentences,” she says.

“I tell them, you need to understand that what he did to you is a crime,” she says. “And to help them remember that they’re a victim of a crime and that’s not something to be ashamed of, but something to get justice for.”

Part 3 of the series next week: A look at Laurel House’s emergency shelter, hotline and counseling services.

Follow Michael Alan Goldberg on Twitter @mg_thereporter and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/magthereporter.